Personal marketing is the key to life without discounts

Price wars have become part of everyday life in retail. Often, the decision on the amount of discounts is made without analyzing the situation on the market and financial opportunities of the business. As a result, marginality falls and the business is on the verge of survival. Personalized marketing involves the targeted use of discounts in combination with other tools to increase sales. At the same time, everyone remains the winner: both business and the buyer.

“Life without discounts” begins with a personal acquaintance with the client, his features, preferences and antipathies, ”said Ivan Borovikov, CEO of Mindbox. A person makes his choice between several options based on two factors: the price of the goods and the impression of the service. If you decide that playing with the price is the last thing, then you need to bet on the quality and personalization of the service.

Personalizing marketing is not so difficult. At the first stage, only one customer contact (phone or e-mail address) and technology that will allow you to see not a “stream of unknown checks”, but a specific person with his purchases are enough. For this, the basic mechanics of loyalty programs are needed when customers receive a discount or points in exchange for using a bonus card.

If we are talking about an online store, it is useful to explain to the buyer the benefit of the fact that he will leave his contacts. You get a chance to “recognize” it automatically at each next visit, since modern technologies allow it.

Ivan Borovikov offers the following scenario for building trust with a client.

At the first purchase, the store customer receives a funded card in exchange for a phone number. At each subsequent visit to the store, he simply presents a card or calls a phone number and received a discount of 5%, while accumulating points for purchases. If the client "disappeared", using SMS the store reminds him of himself.

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When the balance of points accumulated on the card becomes sufficient to receive a pleasant discount or free product, the store offers the participant to spend points, having previously answered a couple of questions in the questionnaire on the website or through the call center. You cannot spend points without filling out the questionnaire. So you can get all the necessary information about the client (city, age, gender, date of birth, etc.). Open and optional questions in the questionnaire should be avoided: the data are heterogeneous and difficult to use. If you have no idea how tomorrow you will use the answer to the question “What are your plans for the weekend” - exclude it from the questionnaire. Be sure to explain to the buyer why it is beneficial to fill out a questionnaire and promise not to spam - this will serve as a decisive argument.

The database of purchases allows you to see the volumes and reasons for the outflow of customers, predict the date, time and composition of the next purchase, create personal offers. If you build up such communication correctly, everyone will be happy: the buyer will have a personal attitude to himself, and the company will save on media advertising and increase revenue.

Ivan Borovikov does not claim that he will be able to completely refuse discounts, but it will become possible to use this tool more efficiently. Experiments show: in order to push the customer to purchase, often a small discount is enough. You can see for yourself.

Select three groups of customers, send them a direct offer (e-mail or SMS) with different sizes of discounts (for example, in 7, 10 and 15%), and compare the response. It is likely that the difference in response between customers who received an 7% discount and a group that received an 15% offer will be small. Applying a discount in 7% for all customers, you will receive as many new orders as with 15%, but you will not kill the margin.